Ice-cream has a long history in the world of public eating. Margaret Visser recently reminded us that as far back as the fifteenth century ice, snow water, and fruit ices were being sold by merchants on the streets of Turkish towns.1 In Western Europe, however, ice-cream remained a luxury enjoyed mostly in royal courts or private houses until the nineteenth century.
It was Italian immigrants who introduced ice-cream to the British as a street food and who created the thriving take-away culture that still survives in cities such as Glasgow. Visser explains that
Italians had introduced the idea to Britain by 1850 at the latest, when Carlo Gatti was peddling ice cream to Londoners from a painted cart. He was so successful that he and others brought many more Italians over to join them. These immigrants were grossly exploited labour, often lodged in poor conditions and paid little; during the winter they often worked as hurdy-gurdy men. Every morning in summer they cranked and froze the ice cream mix they had made the previous night, and went their rounds in London, Glasgow, Manchester, and other growing industrial cities crying, 'Gelati, ecco un poco!' It is thought to be because of their cry that ice-cream vendors were called 'hokey pokey men' and the ice cream they sold 'hokey pokey', a term which became common also in America.2
As economic conditions grew worse in Italy the trickle of immigrants became a flood by the 1880s. Recruited by agents working for padrone in London, Italians were brought to Britain as cheap labour. Many were sent North to Scotland where they were then given a barrow and became 'hokey pokey' men.
The first to arrive in Glasgow were immigrants from the Ciociaria district as Bruno Sereni asserts in his brief history of Italian immigration from Barga to Scotland:
It was the Ciociari who laid the foundations for what was later to become Scotland's flourishing ice-cream industry. The necessity to earn more than could be put together by begging, slowly transformed them from itinerant musicians into itinerant ice-cream salesmen. In summer they would push their ice-cream carts to the gates of the main public parks and do business there. In under 50 years, from 1870 to 1920, with great courage and initiative, they graduated from rudimentary shops in the slum quarters to more luxurious establishments in Sauchiehall Street and the city centre, with lots of mirrors on the walls, wooden partitions and leather-covered seats.3
The later immigrants to Scotland came mainly from two areas of Italy - Lucca and Frosinone in the Abruzzi. In an oral history of this period, Alfonso Barsotti recalls this system of immigration:
I can remember my dad telling me that a couple of men came into the village an' they were talkin' away, 'We've got these places if you're interested, we can give ye work'. And they started describing the places, that there were theatres and big shops and so, of course, all the kids in the village were thinking that this was going to be marvellous. The work, it didnae seem much, they thought just stand out there and sell ice-cream things...this is money for nothin'!...My dad he was about fourteen when he came over. What, of course, they didnae know was that they'd be workin' practically all day and also [that] there was a guy employed just to make sure they only took their wee breaks whenever they should and that they carried out the work.4
Once in Glasgow, the ice-cream trade did provide a living, though only just. The problems of language and work conditions were aggravated by loneliness as the first waves of immigrants were mainly men hoping to return to Italy or make enough to send for their wives or fiancés. Another account by Federico Pontiero conveys the difficulties of the daily work routine :
At the beginning I mean I stood a lot o' abuse, yes, kids especially, because you couldnae speak. Many's the time though you'd get some o' the young boys, they were very good. I gave them 'pokey-hats' and they gave you a hand to shove it [the barrow] up the hill. Some o' the hills you couldnae really shove it yourself because you were trying to shove it up the way and the barrow was pushing down the way. I even pushed the barrow up the Cathkin Braes one morning and you know how much I made? Two pence! Aye, it was heavy, heavy work and it was quite a wee bit hard life tae build up the business. when I did come here the day start seven in the mornin' and that was for eight solid year...We hadna a night off nor nothing. I mind o' Mr Rinaldi, I think he was the first Italian settled in Cambuslang, he used to go down the Clyde there and cut the ice. They cut the ice in the Clyde at that time so it must have been awfu' number of year ago because I never seen a Clyde frozen since!...It was breakin' ice off for the ice-cream.5
The frustrations of such abuse are confirmed by Dominic Crolla's memories:
Many times when the chap would be going round the streets with the barrow they'd get a couple of youths coming up and making a bit of fun because the man couldn't speak English. They'd go up pretending they were going to buy something and when the Italian chap lifted the lid they'd throw bundles of stones or something into the freezer. These boys were only doing it as a prank, you see, but for the Italian man it was a loss of a lot of money because they'd wasted his goods.6
Necessity made the immigrants persevere and, of course, the desire to return home as a landowner. As the ice cream trade developed in Glasgow a hierarchy was established:
For most of them, the most important thing in life was to achieve some kind of economic independence and be able to go back to Barga as quickly as possible. In the years immediately following the first world war Cooper's Café played a major role in the commercial training and careers of many of these youngsters who had immigrated to Glasgow. It represented the first step in the ladder of success: the ownership of a small shop which, in turn, could lead to the ownership of a piece of land in one of the villages around Barga...7
This ladder of success had strictly defined roles which led the young immigrant ever higher in the ice cream industry:
In 1890, Giuliani owned three very successful cafés in Glasgow, two of which were located in Argyle Street and the third near Glasgow Green, where thousands of people gathered every Sunday to listen to the speakers. During the rush hour, he had no less then five assistants serving behind the ice-cream counter. One of the favourite drinks was ginger ale. This strange concoction was prepared in the cellars by the young apprentices who poured it into stone jars ready to be consumed. It was one of the menial tasks they had to perform for a period of time before being allowed the privilege of serving clients at the tables.8
Eventually, as more of the immigrants began to move into the shop trade ice cream barrows began to vanish. In the shops the Italians specialised in ice cream in the summer and, in winter, hot peas and vinegar. These shops were often part of chains that would be sold off to employees who could prove their ability to make a profit. One Italian woman remembers her father operating such a chain:
My father came to Edinburgh in 1902 and in those days you could get a shop and some stock for about £150. After a while, he used to open the shops and sell them to the Italian fellows, you know, as a going concern. First of all he took them on as payin' servants [employees] and then, if they were worthy, he sold them the shop and they paid him so much a week, you see, towards the shop becoming theirs.9
In Glasgow Giuliani had also begun to operate such a system, creating a broad network of cafés across the city:
Giuliani...began to take on the more alert among the assistants and apprentices as full-fledged partners, on an equal basis, in the running of these new concerns. The owners would supply the premises with all the necessary furniture and equipment plus the usual stocks of cigarettes, chocolates, soft drinks, milk and sugar which were all purchased in bulk at discounted prices. The working partner would provide the labour and accept full responsibility for the efficient running of the business, the profits being shared equally between them.10
Police statistics indicate just how rapid was the spread of these shops. In 1903 there were 89 in Glasgow, a year later there were 184 and by 1905 there were estimated to be 336 ice cream shops in the city.11 The Italian immigrant population had been growing as quickly reaching a high point of 4500-5000 around this time.
Glasgow was used to such waves of immigration, having already absorbed Irish and Eastern European Jewish populations in the nineteenth century. The city was, at that time, the thriving industrial centre of the British Empire leading the world in shipbuilding and heavy engineering. Glasgow was also in the throes of an artistic renaissance with artists such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Fra Newbury, Herbert McNair and Margaret MacDonald creating a distinctive art nouveau style. More importantly Mackintosh was receiving some of his most important commissions in the city from Kate Cranston, proprietor of Cranston's Tea Rooms.
Riding on a wave of Temperance reform Miss Cranston had opened a series of tea rooms in Glasgow, providing an elegant alternative to pubs for the middle-classes. Mackintosh's Japanese-influenced designs provided the city with a series of café interiors that transformed the notion of public eating in Glasgow. Tea and other refreshments were no longer to be taken only on a functional level in dull, unimaginative surroundings. In Miss Cranston's rooms, public eating had become an adventure. Glasgow, a city which had for so long accepted the strictures of presbyterianism, was beginning to enjoy itself. Both its prosperous middle-classes and its large workforce were seeking new entertainments - cinemas were opening, music-halls and dance-halls flourished.
It was in this context that the Italians brought ice-cream shops to the attention of the Glasgow public. The immigrant owners of the shops must have been surprised by the hostility they faced in the early years of ice cream in the city. The conservative forces that controlled the city were already made anxious by the growing entertainment industry in the city. For them, the Italian ice cream shops epitomized the evil of luxury being smuggled into the souls of Glaswegians. The Italians were very obviously Roman Catholics, 'aliens' or foreigners, Sunday traders, and finally, they were purveyors of ice cream. When all of these attributes were linked to the sale of something so obviously luxurious, unneccesary, and ephemeral as ice cream the forces of conservatism had found the embodiment of all they feared.
In one of his early novels called Hatter's Castle A.J. Cronin gives us a glimse of the genteel fear aroused by the heady mixture of ice cream and the exotic. The hero, Denis, drags his lover into an Italian café in Dumbarton:
He took her arm firmly and led her a few doors down the street, then, before she realised it and could think even to resist, he had drawn her inside the cream-coloured doors of Bertorelli's café. She paled with apprehension, feeling that she had finally passed the limits of respectability, that the depth of her dissipation had now been reached, and looking reproachfully into Denis' smiling face, in a shocked tone she gasped:
"Oh, Denis, how could you?"
Yet, as she looked round the clean, empty shop, with its rows of marble-topped tables, its small scintillating mirrors, and brightly papered walls, while she allowed herself to be guided to one of the plush stalls that appeared exactly like her pew in church, she felt curiously surprised, as if she had expected to find a sordid den suited appropriately to the debauched revels that must, if tradition were to be believed, inevitably be connected with a place like this.
Her bewilderment was increased by the appearance of a fat, fatherly man with a succession of chins, each more amiable than the preceding honest one, who came up to them, smilingly, bowed with a quick bend of the region which had once been his waist...
"Nice chap, that," said Denis, "straight as a die; and as kind as you make them!"
"But." quavered Mary, "they say such things about him."
"Bah! He eats babies, I suppose! Pure, unlovely bigotry, Mary dear. We'll have to progress beyond that some day, if we're not to stick in the dark ages. Although he's Italian he's a human being...12
Mary's reactions were a testimony to the success of the attacks launched on the primarily Italian ice cream trade in Scotland at that time. As the new shops spread through Glasgow and the surrounding towns religious groups allied with police forces and the shopkeeper's union to limit their trading powers.
The initial attacks on ice-cream shops were on the grounds of late opening and Sunday trading. In May, 1906 the Glasgow Herald carried a report of a memorial from the British Women's Temperance Association under the headline 'An Objectionable Trade'. The Association argued that
One most objectionable and pernicious aspect of Sunday trading in Scotland was that of the ice-cream shop, which in recent years had reached alarming numbers. The Magistrates had no control or regulation over these shops beyond seeing that under the local Police Act they were not kept open between midnight and five a.m. They had no control over their opening on Sundays, and the disorderly behaviour in these shops on Sundays was nothing short of a public scandal. There was neither necessity nor desire in Scotland for general Sunday trading, which has developed to a very great extent in recent years, because of the extended operations of the foreign shopkeeper, whose trade had been to the serious detriment to the youth of the country. If a law on Sunday trading did no more than close those ice-cream howffs on that day it would be welcomed in Scotland as a great blessing.13
This attack is surprising as it comes from a Temperance Association. Italian shop owners knew that they could benefit from the Temperance Movement as the rising population of teetotallers sought out new non-alcoholic establishments but in 1906 they obviously still had to convince the Temperance Associations. Sunday trading, their influence on the young, and the fact that they were 'foreign' shopkeepers still outweighed their virtues.
Evidence given to a Joint Parliamentary Committee on Sunday Trading only ten days after this attack reveals exactly how these opinions of ice cream shops were expressed. Mr. Anderson, chairman of the Scottish Shopkeepers' and Assistants Union was cross-examined:
Mr. Stuart Samuel - What is there exactly against these ice-cream shops? - A: There have been a number of convictions for gambling and shebeening, and altogether the moral tone is not good.
Why should the language used in ice-cream shops be worse than in any other shop, say butcher's shop, that is open on a Sunday? A: - It is not "Why should it?" but "Who is it?" (Laughter). The bad language arises from the class of people who frequent the shops.
Do you urge immorality against these ice-cream shops? - I should not like to urge it, but it is known.
Do you say betting takes place among those young people? - It is understood to be so; I have seen it done.
The objection you have is that those shops encourage gambling? - Yes.
You say there is a baker who opens on Sunday in Glasgow. Is he a Jew? - Yes; I could not say whether he closes on Saturday.
Earl Beauchamp - The Chief Rabbi made the suggestion that if a Jew shut on Saturday, he should be allowed to trade on Sunday. How would such a measure be viewed in Glasgow? - I do not think it would be well received. The general body of the public would object to it. The traders certainly would object to it.
The Duke of Northumberland - You were asked why there should be more objectionable language and conduct than in a butcher's shop. Is it not the case that young persons of both sexes hang about and loaf in the ice-cream shops? - That is so; and the loafing goes on to a very late hour.
Mr. Gulland - I have heard frequent complaints that children going to Sabbath schools with pennies to put in the missionary boxes go instead to the ice-cream shops; is that so? - I have heard so. In fact, it is quite a known thing.14
By June accounts of such minor atrocities had been superseded as various police inspectors stepped forward to give evidence. At this point the attack on ice-cream shops turned to their role as dens of iniquity - it is argued that they are an evil whether they are open on Sunday or not:
Cross-examined, witness stated that he had seen boys and girls indulging in the practice of smoking cigarettes. His objection to the shops was because of the way in which they were conducted. Q. You want to see the shops closed...Witness did not think respectable restaurateurs and confectioners would allow them to carry on such tricks in their shops. Witness added that his contention was that the Italians did not exercise proper control. In answer to a question by the Sheriff as to whether the withdrawal of the ice-cream business would take away all the attraction of these shops, witness replied that the procuring of ice-cream was certainly an attraction, but, in his opinion, it was rather the liberty allowed the young people that attracted them. Other police inspectors were examined to show the detrimental effect of these shops on young people. Inspector Butler, of the Central Division, stated that in his district he had seen girls of tender years smoking cigarettes in the shops and on the streets as well. The Italian shopkeeper did not object to selling cigarettes to girls. Sergeant Spence, of the Northern District, speaking of the behaviour of the boys and girls who frequented the ice-cream shops, stated that they were in the habit of smoking cigarettes and dancing to music supplied by a mouth organ, while the language was more forcible than polite. He had seen respectable men and women searching for their daughters late at night through these shops, and he had himself assisted more than once to get these girls home. His experience was that the liberty and license in the ice-cream shops were more agreeable to the young folks than the restraint at home.
Cross-examined, witness added that he had seen the boys and girls kissing and smoking and cuddling away at each other...Detective Young, Northern Division, stated that he had known many little girls when about twelve or thirteen years of age who had since been before the Magistrates, and were now prostitutes. The boys who had accompanied them as girls were now living off them, and were going out acting as their bullies at night. Q. Do you ask us to believe that the downfall of these women was due to ice-cream shops? A. I believe it is.15
These descriptions seem to depict some of the first sightings of the evolving 'teenager' in the twentieth century. The accounts appear to be deliberately inflammatory, portraying the innocent youths of Glasgow in the clutches of unscrupulous foreigners. The bathos of the teenage girls' descent from smoking to cuddling to prostitution is constantly reiterated in such newspaper reports and on one occasion hospital records of teenage births are used to confirm the dangers of these shops.
The defence, when it came, was reasonable but ineffectual against such vivid images. G. Dambrosio, president of the Ice-Cream Dealers Association asserted that the notion of teenagers in these shops at night was a 'bogey man of Glasgow, an imaginary evil'.16 Richard McCulloch, secretary of the Grand and Metropole Theatres, argued that there was an average of 30,000 people streaming out of the theatres and music halls every night and that ice cream parlours provided a source of non-alcoholic refreshment for such crowds. Given the population of Glasgow and the boom in entertainment at this time in the city his figures are not unreasonable. His opinion was also seconded by a secretary of the United Irish League who records a more sedate vision of life in the ice cream shop:
Mr. James O'Donnell Derrick [stated] that his engagements frequently took him out of town in the evenings and on his return to the city he immediately went to an ice-cream shop for supper. He got bovril and biscuits. He was usually accompanied by others of a concert party, and the shop he went to was the most convenient to his home. He had personal acquaintance with a Temperance association in St. Rollox, mainly made up of working men, among whose number it was a regular thing for them to frequent an ice-cream shop for refreshment and a chat.17
These reasonable arguments had begun to win the sympathy of the Temperance Movement as the above account reveals. In 1907 the ice cream shop owners strengthened this alliance by setting up the Temperance Refreshment Traders Defence Association. Composed entirely of Italians, the organization raised 800 signatures for a petition against any change in legislation against ice cream shops. This strategic advance was quickly cut short, however, by the United Free Church who organized a conference in Glasgow to debate the question of the ice cream trade. It began badly for the traders when the Reverend Robert Wilson declared that 'Those engaged in the trade were all foreigners, and were not influenced by the same social and moral restraints of our own people.' Things only grew worse as the conference proceeded. In an article entitled 'Ice-Cream "Hells"' the Glasgow Herald reported the remarks of a Mr D. Drummond, saying
He described ice-cream shops as perfect iniquities of hell itself and ten times worse than any of the evils of the public-house. They were sapping the morals of the youth of Scotland.18
With such attacks the ice cream shops found themselves under increased pressure again. The newspaper reports for the next two years record a constant series of prosecutions of traders for late opening, shebeening and for gambling. The charges of gambling all related to machines such as the one described in the following account:
At Govan Police Court yesterday two Italian ice-cream dealers were each fined for having had in their shops machines for the purpose of inducing people to engage in games of hazard. In the case against Mansueto Tognieri, 575 Govan Road, who pleaded not guilty, the evidence given by the police was to the effect that on the evening of September 24 a young man entered Tognieri's shop and went forward to a machine known as the 'Pickwick'. He twice inserted a penny and set the machine in motion, but lost on each occasion. The officers then entered the shop and put a penny in the machine, and lost it. They afterwards took the machine with them. The accused remarked at the time that he was not aware he was doing any harm in having the machine in the shop. It was explained that the apparatus was worked by putting a penny in the slot and shooting a ball to the top of the machine. The operator then endeavoured to catch the ball in a cup as it descended. If successful he was given a metal check, which entitled him to goods to the value of 3d. The Magistrates found the charge proved.19
As a form of gambling these machines were little more than an innocent pastime. It was evident that the ice cream shops represented a more profound threat to the city fathers and to the religious leaders. Partly it was xenophobia. All immigrants face suspicion and an underlying theme of all the attacks on ice cream shops was that they were owned by 'aliens'. In one instance, in 1917, this became very clear in a case involving two Italian ice cream shop owners in Paisley. Sheriff Blair, in his summation, stated that
These gentlemen seem to have no regard to the ordinary British methods of trading, and very little conception of what truth is. They put nothing in writing, they keep no books of any kind, they keep no bank accounts, they shelter behind their own ignorance real or assumed: they enter into so-called arrangements of partnership by which it is easy to defeat the claims of their British creditors, they allege they buy and sell businesses on a plan that is unknown in this country, they juggle in and out of ownership like rabbits in a burrow, and then they quarrel amongst themselves and invoke the aid of our law."20
This sort of statement is unequivocal but it doesn't explain why exactly the ice cream trade aroused such passions while other Italian concerns escaped censure.
Ice cream itself seems to have been at the root of the fear. The shops provided an exotic luxury which had overtones of the forbidden. The very 'foreignness' of the product was exhilarating to customers as they watched the brightly coloured confections melt before their eyes. The ephemeral nature of ice cream is also a potent source of myth, as Margaret Visser has noted. It is a food which suggests festivity - a break from work - a saturnalian dish. In the heart of Glasgow in the 1900s ice cream appeared to be undermining the work ethic of the city known as 'the Workshop of the World'. Furthermore, it was doing it in public. The ice cream shops set up in these years provided the template for a new form of public eating in Britain. The cafés of the fifties and sixties with their teenage clientele were simple evolutions of this basic model. Finally, ice cream brought a new element of sexuality to public eating in Glasgow. Unlike the prim, spatial formality of Miss Cranston's tea rooms, an ice cream shop broke down taboos as Mary, the heroine of Cronin's Hatter's Castle, quickly discovered:
Now she was eating her macallum, a delicious concoction of ice-cream and raspberry juice, which, cunningly blending the subtly acid essence of the fruit with the cold mellow sweetness of the ice-cream, melted upon her tongue in an exquisite and unexpected delight. Under the table Denis pressed her foot gently with his, whilst his eyes followed her naïve enjoyment with a lively satisfaction.21
As a barometer of changing social attitudes cafés, fish and chip shops and take-aways deserve to be explored more fully. The slow acceptance of new foods and the changing approaches to public eating reveal deeper revisions of moral and social codes that, in turn, illuminate the history of any society.